Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“Yeah.” She snuggled in closer, her voice softer, slower. “If someone showed up with a letter from Dad, it would be everything.”
Yeah, I thought as the darkness closed in. It would.
“Don’t ever let me stay up for over twenty-four hours again,” I groaned into my coffee. Phoebe tittered, bringing her own cup to her lips. “This feels like the worst hangover of my life. But worse.”
“Getting old sounds terrible.”
“No, it’s great. It’s the best. As long as you don’t make any sudden movements or stay up past nine.”
She laughed, her voice giving life to the nearly empty hotel dining room.
We’d slept in and took our time padding around our room getting ready for the day, only making the effort to go downstairs for sustenance after I texted Dex telling him to go ahead to Catalina’s without us.
I hadn’t heard back from him, but he’d mentioned he wasn’t a big texter, so I tried not to read into it.
Maybe it was anticlimactic to make the trip to Oregon only to miss out on the end result, but now we knew exactly what this trip meant to Dex and to Catalina—Benji’s last words to the love of his life were in that letter.
We’d never had a right to read them. A mistake of cataclysmic proportions.
But we were here because of that mistake.
We found Dex and now we’d found Catalina, and hopefully bringing her the letter would give them both a semblance of peace.
We weren’t entitled to take part, so we loaded our plates at the brunch buffet to keep our minds off it.
“Remember when Dad threw his back out before his fortieth birthday?” Phoebe said around a mouthful of scrambled eggs. I nodded, propping my chin up with my hand. My head felt like a bowling ball balancing on a golf tee. “And I spent like a week waiting on him? That’s gonna be us by September.”
“You shut your mouth.”
“I’m gonna have to get you a little bell.”
“Hilarious.”
“You’ll only have me for a few years, though. Once I go to college, we’ll have to invest in Life Alert.”
I plucked a blueberry off my plate and threw it across the table at her. She dodged it with another laugh. “I’m not elderly,” I said. “I am merely suffering from two weeks spent in a car with a dude I thought was another dude.”
“Is it terminal?” she asked gravely. I snorted. “You know, the whole mistaken identity thing is kind of on you. I figured you would’ve done a background check.”
“I told Arden I did. It was the only way to get her off my back.”
“She’s gonna kill you.”
I knew this. I’d been deliberately vague in my text update this morning and Arden had texted five times since. “I’m trying not to think about it. Or anything, really.” I stabbed a home fry with my fork and pointed it at Phoebe. “How are you doing with all of this? You still good?”
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “I might try to con him out of, like, twenty grand, but I haven’t decided yet.”
“You could probably get him to pay for college.”
“And a master’s.”
“Throw in a doctorate.”
“Culinary school when I realize my life isn’t where I want it to be.”
“He’ll personally fund your first photography exhibition when you’re thirty.”
“Twenty-five,” she amended, shooting me a sly grin. “While I’m still young.”
I rolled my eyes, taking a moment to bask in the euphoria of goofing off with my sister. As upside down as the rest of the world was, I had her.
“Piece of work,” I muttered.
She beamed, shoveling a heaping forkful of pancakes into her mouth.
Her eyes caught something over my shoulder and her expression dimmed.
“Um,” she said, jerking her chin in the direction of the lobby.
I anticipated Dex’s presence before my eyes found him in the arched entrance of the dining room, standing with his back facing us in a black T-shirt and blue jeans.
My heart squeezed painfully in my chest, watching as he dragged a hand over his face up into his hair and squared his shoulders. He turned.
For a moment, we stared at each other. He swallowed hard. I resisted the urge to lift my hands to my face to make sure my head still sat in place on my shoulders.
He hadn’t gone to Catalina’s. His shoulders were tight with anxiety, his brow in a permanent furrow, eyes heavy and dark; this was a man, burdened. A man grieving. Alone.
I pushed out of my chair and moved toward him. His eyes tracked me across the room.
“You can’t do this,” I said, making a point to leave a good amount of space between us. If I smelled him right now, game over. “You’ve come too far to give up.”
“I can’t do this alone.” He shook his head sharply, squeezing his eyes shut. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.” My hand twitched at my side, desperate to reach for him.
That Phoebe and I hadn’t checked out of our room and Ubered to the airport hinted at something in the forgiveness realm, but neither of us had broached the topic and today wasn’t about us, anyway.
“This has never been about Phoebe and me, Dex. It has nothing to do with us.”
“That didn’t matter when you were opening my dead brother’s mail.
” My instinct to defend Phoebe kicked in, but his words bore no bite, no venom, and then he was groaning, rubbing his eyes roughly.
“Fuck. I’m sorry,” he rasped, and my stomach tanked.
He sounded wrecked. “I fucked everything up and now I’m losing my mind.
I’m sorry. I am. I know I screwed up and you’re gonna leave and I’ll deserve it, but please do this for me.
” He stepped closer, eyes bloodshot and shining.
My dad used to hug us when we cried, telling us to just say when, and he’d hold on until then.
I wanted to do that for Dex, to hold him until the pain went away, even now.
“I need you. I don’t know when it started, but I need you with me for this.
I have been alone for so long, I forgot what it was like to have a hand to hold.
You and Phoebe are the only reason I’m here.
You carried me. I can’t do this without you. I don’t want to.”
I couldn’t catch my breath. A tear slipped down my cheek. “Dex…”
“We’ll go.” Phoebe appeared at my side with that determined look on her face. When she cast me a quick glance, her eyes were swimming. “That’s what we do, right? We’re here for each other, even through the messy shit.”
Dex swallowed thickly. The fog of uncertainty in his eyes told me I wasn’t the same person I was in Boston; I could tell Phoebe no and feel all right about doing it, even if she refused to speak to me for a day or two.
For the first time since Dad died, I was running the show.
And right now, a surge of pride radiated through my chest watching my sister stand by Dex, unflinching and solid.
I knew the pain and despair, the echoes of loneliness, the urge to push everyone away because if the person I believed to be the love of my life walked out when I was at my lowest, who could possibly stay?
“We’ll go,” I agreed. Dex’s expression crumpled, just for a second, and then he stepped into me, pressing a soft kiss to my forehead.
“Thank you.” He pulled away to squeeze Phoebe’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank us, idiot,” she replied. “We’re all messes here.”
Catalina lived in a quaint ranch with a cherry blossom tree in the front yard. The three of us stood on the sidewalk, a breeze winding the floral summer scent around us.
“It’s her dad’s house,” Dex said without prompting. “She moved here after everything. I haven’t… It’s been a long time since I saw her. Or spoke to her. Too long.”
His nerves were contagious—beside me, Phoebe bounced on her heels, nearly chewing a hole in her lip.
She’d put so much thought into her striped tee and denim shorts while we were getting ready, forgoing makeup.
I wondered how she pictured this day before reality caught up to us.
Admittedly, I’d never wanted to think about Catalina as anything other than a name on an envelope, so I hadn’t thought about this at all.
But now, with Catalina merely feet away, I took charge.
“Come on,” I said. Phoebe shot a panicked look at Dex.
His eyes fell from the house to me, clouded with doubt.
I couldn’t imagine the chaos raging in his head right now and there was nothing I could do to deter it, but I reached for him anyway, sliding my hand up his back, encouraging.
His throat worked, the tension seeming to drain a bit.
Together, we walked up the porch steps. Dex hesitated before ringing the doorbell. You are so brave and you have no idea, I thought, watching him roll his shoulders, anxiously picking at his cast as the door swung open.
Catalina was beautiful—dark curls tumbling over her shoulders, full lips, curves showcased in a wrap dress. Immediately, I lumped her in the same category as Dex: the intimidating, almost scary sort of beautiful. And then her face broke into a grin, and she could’ve been a little kid.
“Dex,” she said and burst forward, throwing her arms around him. He lifted her up until her bare feet dangled and she let out a wet laugh. “You look terrible.”
“I feel worse.” He set her down and she beamed, her hands sliding down his arms until meeting the cast.
“What happened?”
“Broken arm. It’s fine.”
“Bree didn’t say anything about a broken arm.” She crossed her arms, still smiling. “She told me you were coming.”
“I figured.”
“She didn’t say why.”
He tugged a hand through his hair and gestured to us. Her eyes followed. “Violet and Phoebe. They live in the old apartment.”
“Ah.” She smiled tightly. This, it seemed, wasn’t new information either. “Come on in.”